


Happy Families

by tilia_cordata



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Cheating, Family, Family Secrets, Gen, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tilia_cordata/pseuds/tilia_cordata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine family headcanon in prose form</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Families

Katherine Anderson was pregnant, which was a problem, because she hadn’t slept with her husband in three years.

 

Their lives were too busy, work was too stressful, Cooper was too much of a handful. Those were the excuses they had made for themselves. The truth was thirty four was very different than twenty five was very different from nineteen, and maybe Katherine still loved her husband, but maybe they were two people who shared a house and split the bills and stayed on opposite sides of a king sized bed.

Getting pregnant was not supposed to be this easy or this fast or happen at all. They’d tried for a second child five or six years ago, but nothing ever came to pass. So when Katherine Anderson spent the weekend out of town at a conference in a hotel with a bar and not much else, went out for drinks with an old colleague, who could blame her for going up to his room, just the once, just for tonight.

Two weeks later, a missed period and two stupid pink lines on a pregnancy seemed to mock her.

She thought about ending it, she really did. It was probably what she was expected to do, it’s what she expected herself to do. Mark wouldn’t even ever have to know, she knew how to be discreet. She took that Friday off work, then she would have weekend to recover, and everything would be well and good Monday morning.

Before she called to make the appointment, though, she found herself distracted by photo albums. Baby pictures of Cooper. This beautiful, young, perfect family, just starting out in their first jobs. She had still been in grad school, Mark had just gotten his very first promotion. And then there was this loud, exuberant, troublesome but beautiful baby.

Maybe having another would make things better again. Would bring things back to the way they were in these photos.

So instead of going to Planned Parenthood, Katherine went to the grocery store. Bought good cuts of steak, a bottle of Mark’s favorite wine, oysters. She scheduled a sleepover for Cooper, cleaned the house, made the bed. She had dinner on the table when Mark got home from the office, met him at the door with a kiss. Had him in bed in less than three hours.

For the first time in three years, Katherine Anderson had sex with her husband. After he was finished and asleep, she felt about five minutes of happy relief before she remembered (of course, how could she have possibly forgotten) that the man she slept with looked  _nothing_ like her husband.

Mark was pale, blue eyed, mousy-haired. Carlos, who bought her a drink and gave her a smile, had dark skin and perfect, dark, curly hair. Maybe her genes were strong enough to keep Mark from getting too suspicious - Cooper looked much more like her, after all. Maybe he’d fall in love with the baby enough that he wouldn’t even care.

Eight months later ( _“He’s so big for being born three weeks early, isn’t he?”_ ) Blaine Devon Anderson came into the world, hazel eyes and little tufts of dark hair, rosy and pink and new.

For the next year or so, things were a sort of happy tumbling chaos that came with a new baby and Cooper, who was still three years away from being a teenager and yet oddly close to acting like one. Everyone was exhausted and busy but Blaine was such a happy baby, it was hard not

But a year doesn’t last, and things started to fall back into old patterns. Nights and weekends were lost to the offices, dinners were more rushed and rarely together. Babysitters got called last minute and stayed longer than before.

And then there was this: as Blaine got bigger, the comments of “Oh, he looks just like you” that people give to fathers of sons, they stopped. People still made those comments about Cooper as he turned ten, eleven, twelve. But not about Blaine at one, two, three.

Katherine noticed Mark noticing. And so, she thought, if little Blaine didn’t look like her husband, if his hair was too curly and his eyes were the wrong shape, she could make him like Mark in all the other ways. She found hair gel safe for three-year-old hair and little bow ties and sweater vests. A tiny miniature businessman, suddenly the spitting image of the man she needed to convince was his father.

Mark didn’t have any reason to suspect, really. He loved Blaine, this sweet and charming and oddly formal child. But there’s this nagging unfamiliarity. The worry that after having tried so long for so many years, Blaine happened out of nowhere. The recognition that his marriage had grown cold. But she couldn’t have, could she? Would she? Certainly she could have thought about it, he certainly had, but never  _acted_  how could she -

No. Of course Blaine was his, it was ridiculous to think otherwise.

But the tiny, inkling little suspicion bred distance. Mark took both his sons to football games, to the park, on fishing trips. But he didn’t know how to be just with Blaine, and so occupied himself with Cooper (who demanded more and more attention the older he got), and with work. She let Katherine and Cooper and babysitters occupy themselves with Blaine, who was growing up so quickly.

So there was distance. Mark tried not to let Blaine feel it, he really did, but Blaine was smart. He just didn’t understand.

At thirteen years old, bold and self-assured and  _terrified_  Blaine Anderson tells his parents he think he might be gay. They say the things they are supposed to say, like the literature tells them they should. Later Katherine tells Mark she suspected, and he realized he had no idea at all. Realized he barely knows his son (but is Blaine his? Of course. But …) at all. He’s too far gone.

And then there are the times it doesn’t matter. When he gets a call from the hospital (“Hello, is this Mr. Anderson? Your son has a concussion and four broken ribs, can you come right away please?”). When Blaine spends weeks walking around in a fog and Mark can see it but has no idea what to say. When McKinley High School is on the news - a gun has gone off, there are students still inside, no Katherine, he’s not answering his phone. He feels the terror and the worry and the sleepless nights because this child he has cared for fifteen, for seventeen years is hurting

The gap doesn’t go away though. Nagging and troublesome and made of accusations he can’t name (made of truths she can’t admit) and the guilt that his capacity to love this child isn’t enough to overcome.

_Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way._


End file.
